I WANT TO LIVE liner notes

[ghost of miles]

I'm working on a Night Lights program about the 1958 Susan Hayward movie I WANT TO LIVE! and its accompanying two soundtracks--Johnny Mandel's Great Jazz Score and Gerry Mulligan--The Jazz Combo. Does anybody have the liner notes, by John Tynan and William Johns respectively, and if so, could they possibly post them or send them to me? Thanks much in advance for any assistance. (The CD reissue of both albums does not include the original liners.)

[Stereojack]

Here's a scan of the soundtrack album notes. The "Jazz Combo" notes will be along as soon as I scan them.

JOHNNY MANDELS GREAT JAZZ SCORE

For

I WANT TO LIVE!

(Featuring Shelly Manne, Jack Sheldon, Bill Holman, Frank Rosolino)

The cavernous soundstage was silent.

The slight, brown-bearded young man on the podium wearily

picked up his jacket, slung it across an arm and walked toward

the exit, a singular expression of tired satisfaction etched on

his face.

Behind, already in the can, was his freshly dubbed underscore

to Walter Wanger's shocking drama of the life and death of

Barbara Graham, I Want To Live! In sum it represents the most

exacting and brilliant music in the career of composer John

Mandel.

"This was a very tough picture to write," he remarked a little

later as~he relaxed in a nearby restaurant. "There are scenes that

required very careful handling. The preparations in the gas

chamber, for example. And the execution itself... The night-

mare sequence, in particular, was difficult to handle dramatically."

Then he smiled and confessed, "There were so many short cues

and dissolves, I nearly lost my mind. To show you what I mean,

there's one scene in which Perkins, the accomplice, collapses a

house of cards on the table after Barbara tells him she's to be

married. At that point I had to cover the developments of a

year-and-a-half in 40 seconds of music!"

While a composer's technical adroitness is no small factor in

motion picture work, the content of what he writes in an under-

score must, in the final analysis, determine his true worth as a

creative artist.

Because Johnny Mandel is a creative jazz musician, there is

no room in his scheme of reference for the trite and imitative.

What he has accomplished in his contribution to the film - the

music contained between these covers - is to bring to motion

picture background music a new, dynamic dimension - American jazz.

This underscore and source music is not the pseudo-jazz of

prior attempts by more established movie composers to lend

added excitement and tension to dramatic action. In conception,

feeling and execution Mandel's music is jazz-from the open-

ing measures of the main title to the final crashing climax.

In short, John Mandel, at 32, has made musical history. No

composer writing for films before him has employed the jazz

idiom to such telling effect in integrating music and dramatic

action.

While those who have seen the film will undoubtedly derive

most enjoyment from this album, the music can solidly stand

on its own artistic merits as modern jazz to be listened to apart

from the medium for which it was composed. In itself this is a

rarity for movie soundtrack albums.

"Two tracks of special interest, I think," pointed out the

composer in discussing the recording, "are numbers five and six

- the scenes in which Barbara surrenders after much tailing

and a stakeout by the police. There are five drummers in that

portion, and they're playing everything in the world!"

Warming to the subject, he continued, "A point worth noting

is that throughout the picture, the drums represent the forces of

law and order. Consequently, when there is primary action on

camera, such as the scene where Santo beats Barbara before

giving himself up, the drums in the background keep reminding

the audience that the cops are just outside, the building sur-

rounded."

For the record, those hard-working drummers on the side of

the law are Shelly Manne (standard drums), Larry Bunker

(rhythm logs, cowbells and claves), Mel Lewis (scratcher and

cowbells). Milt Holland (chromatic drums, cowbells, Chinese

and Burmese gongs) and Latin specialist Mike Pacheco (bongos

and conga drums).

"A really knotty problem," according to Johnny, "was musical

treatment of the gas chamber preparations and the execution

itself. You know, Bob Wise, the director, fought for music in

those scenes. At first, I didn't want to write anything for them.

Then, I saw Bob's point. So I wrote score to be played at a

very low level, using the instruments in their freak registers.

Reason for this is simply that at this point you have the audience.

There's no need for thunder and lightning."

A measure of the composer's imagination in scoring the

difficult sequences leading to the actual execution (shown with

detailed and chilling realism) may be gathered from his choice

of unorthodox instrumentation. From the point in the story

where Barbara and her "accomplices" are convicted there appear

in the underscore such offbeat horns as E flat clarinet, contra-

bass clarinet, contra bassoon, bass trumpet and bass flute.

Effectively supplementing the "blowing" combo jazz that is

heard as source music throughout most of the film (available in

a separate album on United Artists LP UAS-5006, Mandel

employed solo voices constantly as part of the underscore to the

almost total exclusion of large orchestral tuttis. Virtually the.

cream of the current crop of jazzmen active on the west coast,

the soloists are-Bill Holman, tenor and baritone saxes; Joe

Maini, alto; Jack Sheldon, trumpet; Frank Rosolino, trombone;

Russ Freeman, piano; Larry Bunker, vibes and drums; Harry

Klee, flute and piccolo; Abe Most, E flat clarinet; Al Hendrick-

sen, guitar; Red Mitchell, bass, and Shelly Manne, drums.

Bongoist Mike Pacheco, in addition to his constant work on

the soundtrack, is seen playing during the San Diego party scene.

In the welter of boisterousness at the unrestrained party, much

fine jazz blowing by Maini and Sheldon is drowned. Though

exciting to view, happily the party bedlam is absent on the

record!

It will be noted that the music in this album does not con-

secutively follow the filmed action.

"I think the purpose is pretty obvious," explained Mandel.

"At the end, the music is very depressing - hardly a note on

which to conclude an album... (Matter of fact, when I was

writing for the gas chamber and execution scenes, I'd be so

depressed at the end of the day that I'd rush home and throw

on the turntable the happiest music in my record collection.)

In the album, however, I assembled the various tracks reasonably

in sequence."

Abruptly reverting to the execution scene, Mandel commented,

"Harry Klee is beautiful here. He's playing piccolo, down in

the instrument's lowest register. You'll notice that it doesn't

even sound like a piccolo... almost like someone's dying gasp."

In just tribute the composer noted, "It was primarily through

the imagination of the director, Robert Wise, that we had a jazz

score at all. And so much credit, too, must go to Jack Lewis,

who was music advisor on the picture.

"Oh! And where would a composer be without good editing

and sound mixing? I know I'd've been lost without having on

my side Byron Chudnow, the editor, and Vinton Vernon, who

engineered all the recording. Y'know, it's pretty obvious that

credit for the music end of this production by no means belongs

to just one man.

"From now on," declared Mandel emphatically, "I want to be

associated with a high-quality product-perhaps one, two pic-

tures a year. After all," he shrugged, "music isn't sausages, is it?

And how much money do I need to make, anyway?"

This ex-Count Basie arranger-trombonist, who says he is

"... studying electronics intensively" to help him in the future

recording of his music, is justifiably proud of his inspired score

for / Want To Live! At the suggestion that the music is more than

a good bet for an Academy Award in 1959, he shrugs fatalistically.

"This is the first time I've gotten credit for something im-

portant I've done," he smiles. "A composer is what I am-

and, in a way, that's really enough."

JOHN TYNAN

Associate Editor (West Coast)

DOWN BEAT Magazine

PERSONNEL

Trumpets-Jack Sheldon, Al Porcino, Ed Leddy;

Trombones - Frank Rosolino, Milt Bernhart, Dave

Wells; Bass trumpet-Dave Wells; French Horns-

Vince De Rosa, Sinclair Lott, John Cave, Dick Parisi;

Reeds-Harry Klee (Piccolo and flutes), Abe Most

(clarinets), Joe Maini (saxes and bass clarinet). Bill

Holman (saxes and clarinet), Marly Berman (bass

clarinet and contra bassoon), Chuck Gentry (bass sax

and contra-bass clarinet); String bass-Red Mitchell;

Piano - Pete Jolly; Guitar - Al Hendricksen; Per-

cussion-Shelly Manne, Larry Bunker, Mel Lewis,

Milt Holland, Mike Pacheco; Harp - Kathryn Julye.

Arrangements by JOHNNY MANDEL.

[(BB)]

I have the Jazz combo notes scanned and could send as a pdf.

If still needed let me know.

Bill

[Stereojack]

And here are the notes for the 'jazz combo" album:

GERRY MULLIGAN - THE JAZZ COMBO From I WANT TO LIVE!

SHELLY MANNE, drums; ART FARMER, trumpet; BUD SHANK, alto sax

and flute; FRANK ROSOLINO, trombone; PETE JOLLY, piano; RED MITCHELL,

bass; GERRY MULLIGAN, baritone sax. Arrangements by JOHNNY MANDEL.

There has never been a jazz album quite like this one.

It is the product of a combination of elements that have never occurred in conjunction before - some of them have simply never occurred before at all. Because of their very special nature, they are not likely to occur in conjunction again.

Among these elements are a staggeringly powerful film played out against a background of jazz, the use of the music and reputation of one of the greatest living jazz musicians to project the characterization of the girl about whom the film revolves, the creation of new music to fit these conditions and the actual

performance of this music by the musician himself under circumstances in which he cannot help being aware that he is putting his reputation squarely on the line.

To get down to specifics:

The film is I Want To Live. It is about a girl sliding furiously downhill in the big city jungles of the West Coast, a girl who is, according to a psychologist, "totally amoral, a compulsive liar with no regard for law or order or the conventions of society." She falls, sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly, into almost everything on the wrong side of the law except murder. But it's on a murder rap that the law finally takes her.

The girl, Barbara Graham, moves through an atmosphere in San Francisco and San Diego where jazz hovers constantly in the background. One of the few stabilizing things in her life is her interest in jazz and, particularly, in the music of Gerry Mulligan.

Building on this foundation, the entire score of I Want To Live has been written by Johnny Mandel on a jazz basis. The bulk of his score is played by a big band made up of top West Coast jazzmen (their exciting sound track recordings make up Johnny Mandel's great jazz score from I Want To Live! United Artists UAS-5005). But, to fill out the characterization of Barbara Graham, Mandel also wrote some small group charts

to pinpoint her specific interest in Gerry Mulligan. Played by Mulligan and a brilliantly compatible group of sidemen, these arrangements crop up all through the picture, emerging in a very natural way when a radio is turned on or a record drops on a phonograph, or subtly rising over the subdued murmur in a bar.

What results is a new dimension in the use of jazz in films. We are accustomed to isolated jazz sequences, to the exploitation of jazz devices in otherwise non-jazz scores. There has even been an entire score written by a jazz musician, John Lewis, and played by a jazz group, the Modern Jazz Quartet. But the film in which it was used, "No Sun In Venice," had no essential relationship to jazz. I Want To Live does have that relationship and because it does, it provides Johnny Mandel with an unprecedented opportunity for writing a jazz score.

However, the use that Mandel and producer Walter Wanger have made of the Mulligan small group goes far beyond the normal concept of film scoring. Here, for the first time, is a highly purposeful integration of jazz into a film. It serves as the evocative musical background that is expected of any good score - the customary, passive role that seasons and accents but does not distract attention from the visual part of the film. But at the same time jazz also plays an active role in this case as it takes an acute grasp of the viewer's awareness in the character delineation of Barbara Graham and, through the musical presence of Mulligan, becomes an explicit part of the story development. (In a meaningful scene, Barbara Graham, listening to a radio in her cell in the death house, remarks, "That's Gerry Mulligan." "How do you know?" an attendant asks. "I have all his records," says Barbara).

For both Mandel and Mulligan the situation posed a provocative challenge. Mandel had to write in terms of the needs of the picture and at the same time in a manner that would be thoroughly in the Mulligan mode (which is, fortunately, a broad one). Moreover, Mandel had to write for a musician who usually writes most of his own stuff and whose reputation as a composer and arranger is just as great as his reputation as a

performer.

For his part. Mulligan was in the position of being cited by inference in the picture as one of the jazz greats and, through his playing in the film, of making that estimate valid even for people with only a vague knowledge of jazz. There was the inescapable knowledge that both the high citation and his performance were permanently locked together on the same strip of film, a huge potential target for the knockers’ darts, and that the very validity and dramatic effectiveness of the entire film could be shattered if his performance were the merest whit below his highest capability.

How well both Mandel and Mulligan have succeeded is evident in this album (and how much their success adds to the portrait of Barbara Graham is equally evident in I Want To Live). The root of their success is that understanding interplay which is so crucial to jazz creativity. It starts, in this case, with the empathy that has long existed between Mandel and Mulligan, an empathy which guided Mandel in his writing and which gave Mulligan advance assurance that he was moving into a fully sympathetic situation. Actually, Mulligan discovered that it was far, far more than that once he had seen what Mandel had written and had had the exhilerating experience of playing it. He found the entire musical concept of the film so stimulating and became so anxious to have a part in creating the entire score that he offered to work with the big band (he had been signed only to play with the small group)- and he would have if the geography of prior commitments had not made it physically impossible.

In the playing, this basic empathy between Mandel and Mulligan was doubled and redoubled and multiplied innumerable times in the cross currents of inspiring reaction that flowed among the musicians Mandel grouped around Mulligan - Art Farmer, the vital alternate horn in Mulligan's current Quartet; Bud Shank, eerily counterpoising his flute behind Mulligan's baritone sax on Barbara's Theme and pouring out a surging

flow of alto lines on the other pieces; the volatile, exuberant trombone of Frank Rosolino; and a rhythm section made up of Pete Jolly's fluent piano, the superbly firm bass of Red Mitchell and that ne plus ultra of the drums, Shelly Manne.

The music they play goes the whole route from a loose, easy framework for individual blowing on Frisco Club to a carefully developed mood setting in the I Want To Live Theme which is almost entirely an ensemble piece aside from a glowing muted solo by Farmer and some equally muted drumming by Manne.

This is one of those rare instances in which a firmly established creative artist deliberately sets out to top himself - and succeeds. If Gerry Mulligan had not already gained the musical reputation he wears in the script of 1 Want To Live, his playing in these selections from the sound track of that film would earn it for him.

WILLIAM JOHNS

[(BB)]

Mr. Stereojack,

How are you able to scan and convert to text?

Is it part of your scanner software or a stand alone program?

Thanks,

Bill

Edited July 18, 2006 by (BB)

[Stereojack]

Mr. Stereojack,

How are you able to scan and convert to text?

Is it part of your scanner software or a stand alone program?

Thanks,

Bill

It is part of the scanner software. The setting is called OCR (Optical Character Recognition). It scans the text and converts it to a Word text file.

[ghost of miles]

Stereojack, many thanks!

[Aggie87]

bump.....

I picked up the Deluxe Edition of this soundtrack this past weekend, and am really enjoying this disc! The '99 Rykodisc edition has both the Mandel score itself, as well as the Gerry Mulligan jazz combo's companion album. Well worth picking up for anyone interested.

Edited October 16, 2006 by Aggie87

[ghost of miles]

bump.....

I picked up the Deluxe Edition of this soundtrack this past weekend, and am really enjoying this disc! The '99 Rykodisc edition has both the Mandel score itself, as well as the Gerry Mulligan jazz combo's companion album. Well worth picking up for anyone interested.

Yes, that's the same one I used for the Night Lights show. OOP but a fair # of used copies seem to float around online. Mulligan also recorded a couple of the Mandel compositions with the CJB (they're on the Mosaic box).